Amid Mack Rhoades' swift exit, Missouri focused on future

HOOVER, Ala. - Missouri linebacker Michael Scherer was preparing for a slew of interviews on Wednesday at SEC Media Days when he heard the news that athletic director Mack Rhoades was leaving the Tigers for Baylor.

"Really? He just got here," Scherer responded, shaking his head.

The abrupt exit of Rhoades, who left the University of Houston for Missouri in March of 2015, continues a tumultuous past year for the Tigers. Missouri is now without a permanent chancellor, president and athletic director.

Football coach Barry Odom, whom Rhoades hired in December to replace the retired Gary Pinkel, was left fielding administration questions on Wednesday instead of addressing the Tigers' upcoming season.

"I found out (Tuesday) night, and didn't have any clue before then," Odom said of saying a hasty goodbye to the man who had recently promoted him from defensive coordinator to replace Pinkel. "I didn't have any clue before then."

Rhoades replaces Ian McCaw, who along with football coach Art Briles and chancellor Ken Starr are out at Baylor following a sexual assault scandal that has reverberated nationally. It's been an unsettling past year for Rhoades, too, at Missouri, where last season the football team threatened to boycott games unless university president Tim Wolfe resigned, based on heightening racial unrest. Wolfe and chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, who came to Missouri from Texas A&M, eventually did step down.

Odom played linebacker for Missouri in the late 1990s, so his ties to Columbia, Mo., run deep – also why he's so adamant the Tigers are going to be fine with our without Rhoades.

"He got an opportunity he thought was best for him," Odom said. "I know that I'm very excited about the University of Missouri, and what I've got in place with my staff from a football program standpoint. I absolutely know we'll get a great director of athletics."

"I feel really strongly about where Mizzou is headed, moving forward. Mizzou's been around since 1839. There's been some good and some bad, and it's going to be around a whole lot longer than any of us are."

As for the multiple openings at Missouri? Scherer simply smiled in disbelief at the events at his school over the past year.

"When we get a new athletic director, who's responsible for that hire?" Scherer wondered. "Do we have any sort of leadership? We do have interim guys, so that's good. I'm sure we'll get it all figured out."

In any case, Scherer said life – and practices and games – will go on no matter who's wearing the suits in the upper reaches of Missouri's precarious administration.

"What can you do about it? I can't do anything to change what's going on, nobody can do anything to change it," Scherer said. "You just have to keep moving forward, like nothing has changed. I'm going to show up tomorrow for workouts, and workouts are going to be the same as yesterday."

Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle and chron.com covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.

Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He’s a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione “secret newsletter” scandal in 2007.

His coverage of Texas A&M’s move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.